From Norman to Malinauskas: The Great Unravelling

Greg Norman has washed up, the Shark declaring his four-year LIV Golf experiment complete. Where that leaves South Australia’s Park Lands contract for a Saudi-backed LIV course is unclear, but the symbolism is sharp: another shiny deal gone sour.

The same is happening across Peter Malinauskas’ government. Whyalla’s steel rescue through Gupta—unravelled. The much-hyped green hydrogen dream—unravelled. Hospital ramping, still unresolved, with ambulances idling outside overstretched emergency departments. And in the background, a dangerous clinging to AUKUS, with South Australia’s future tied to whatever Donald Trump tweets tomorrow.

Malinauskas, once the picture of confidence, is moulting. His strut looks increasingly hollow. Even his likely and predictable victory at the next election will carry little substance. It will be not so much power without glory as capture and compliance without credibility or authenticity.

South Australians face a choice between Labor’s cockiness masking failure and the Liberals offering only worse. That is not renewal. It is capture, decline, and theatre.

But the clearest symbol of where we are and where renewal must begin is Festival Plaza. Walker Tower 2, a 38-storey speculative commercial slab overshadowing Parliament House, is the embodiment of captured politics: a government too close to developers, willing to sacrifice heritage, democracy and public space for another city -warming tower.

If Malinauskas wants real renewal, it must start here. The construction of Walker Tower 2 must be stopped. That means negotiating an exit, repurposing the site, and restoring it as a place that honours Adelaide’s unique democratic history where women won the vote, where the Parliament is visible and central, where public space is protected rather than privatised.

Stopping Walker Tower 2 would send a clear signal that Adelaide’s future will not be defined by speculative towers and developer capture, but by community, democracy and sustainability. It would show that our city’s bicentenary in 2036 could celebrate a true renewal, not more decay.

The Shark is gone. The Premier still struts. But real renewal will only come when citizens reclaim democracy and insist that the unravelling stops here, starting with Walker Tower 2.

Stewart Sweeney